Introduction

Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) countries have emerged as attractive near-shore destinations to provide business process and technology services to Continental Europe. However, the cities below have different leverage points across multiple factors relevant for location selection (e.g., costs, labor-pool, functional, language skills) which adds to the complexity. Leading global suppliers/captives have set up delivery centers in numerous cities (~25) in the CEE region, but the location landscape continues to expand in terms of potential countries and cities. This research examines the relative attractiveness of CEE locations for business process outsourcing and prioritizes the best 8-10 locations. It will assist companies considering locations in CEE for BPO services understand the current and evolving city landscape and make informed decisions or trade-offs based on specific company requirements. 

Scope

• Analysis includes 25 cities across 7 countries, including Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Turkey
  • Cities include: Poznan, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Katowice, Ostrava, Prague, Krakow, Pizen, Brno, Olomouc, Bratislava, Budapest, Debrecen, Cluj-Napoca, Pecs, Szeged, Timisoara, Iasi, Bucharest, Sofia, Istanbul, Ankara, Bursa, Izmir, and Adana
• This report is applicable to all industries
• This report is applicable to both buyer and supplier organizations

Contents

This report evaluates city locations across Central & Eastern Europe and assesses their relative attractiveness based on a four step methodology:

• Step 1: Made assumptions to reflect functional, language, and scale requirements of a typical BPO center
• Step 2: Deprioritized cities that did not meet minimum criteria for setting up a center (i.e., stability, security, risk of natural hazard, connectivity, infrastructure support)
• Step 3: Of the remaining cities, deprioritized those that did not have sufficient labor-pool and language skills to support center's requirements
• Step 4: Characterized the remaining city options in terms of cost-risk tradeoffs
  • Total cost of operations (salaries, real estate, equipment, telecom, etc.)
  • Key risks (environmental risks, maturity/time to market, labor availability, language skills, etc.)

This report is divided into six sections. The first four provide a detailed discussion of the methodology steps with supporting data and analysis; the fifth provides the reader with additional considerations for location selection and tips for implementation; and the last section provides one-page city profiles of cities included in the report.